The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  Or did she do all those things when he wasn’t looking?

  And what about his sister and aunt? “I’ve never seen Kara or April do anything unusual.”

  “Their powers are weak.”

  “Are yours?” His voice came out screechy again.

  “There’s no need to be so agitated.”

  Her eyes were green, too. How had he missed all of these clues?

  “We have little more power than the gift of illusion,” Mom-turned-witch said. “We harness the magic of dreams and bring a tiny smidgen into the waking world.”

  “That’s it, huh?”

  “Pretty much. We aren’t all that different than mortals.”

  He’d have to take that on faith. For the moment, she loomed larger than life, and escape out the window had great appeal.

  “Think of me as a magician. That’s closer to how a boy regards his mom, anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe a six-year-old.”

  She turned the book to the opening page again, the one showing Rebecca’s little poem about being muted by some code—a verse written in a language with a surprisingly large following, seeing how Ogham was supposed to be dead and all. “Witches ought to be old hat for you, Brian. You’re dating a devout one, judging by the courting description I translated for you.”

  “The what?”

  “The earliest witches in our line established a code of behavior, and one of their rules called for courtship to be a celebration of enchantment, teasing, and misdirection. That’s what this passage is saying.”

  He struggled mightily to get past the Mom-equals-witch revelation and hear the words she’d spoken, but the news wasn’t exactly encouraging. “So Rebecca could tell me everything, but she’s torturing me, instead?”

  His mom flipped to another page and read in silence. A moment passed before the question sifted through her dark, witchy hair and into her head. “Tell you everything about what?”

  “About anything! She won’t share a thing about herself, where she came from, why she disappears all the time, or where she goes. Nothing.”

  That got her face out of the book. She leaned back in her chair and grinned. “I knew the minute I laid eyes on Rebecca she’d be the one to challenge you right out of your funk.”

  “Oh, so this is funny, huh?”

  The sparkle in her eyes sure said so. She might as well have been rubbing her hands together with glee. “Don’t be angry with her. If the joke is on you, it’s a good one. Rebecca’s a prize. You have to understand how special she is.”

  “Yeah, she’s a witch. So are you. I’m on top of it.”

  “She’s a throwback to a better time. She came to me in her prairie dress and begged permission to date you.”

  “She did?” Despite his alarm or anger or whatever mixed-up emotions had triggered his knee to start bumping up and down, and regardless of the fact Rebecca’s perceived need for permission still didn’t make a whole lot of sense, the revelation she was so into him she’d beg to spend time together sent a tingle through his stomach.

  Mom nodded. “That girl is following a code other witches have ignored for at least a century, Brian. You have no idea how much love and doting an old-fashioned witch is capable of doling out. She’ll devote her life to your happiness!”

  His knee stopped twitching, and his smile stretched to what had to be goofy proportions. But before he could get totally lost in the glory of what she’d said, something dawned on him. The breathtaking turns their little talk had taken were strikingly similar to the typical meandering—and unrevealing—conversations he’d been having with Rebecca herself. His head swam. They’d just gone from A to B to where exactly? “Wait. I thought you brought me in here to yell at me over the dream-invasion thing.”

  “Partly. But I have things to tell you.”

  Pay dirt! He leaned closer, but she turned toward the window and went quiet.

  “Come on,” he said. “You can’t leave me hanging. What things?”

  “How much can I say?”

  He assumed the question rhetorical and waited.

  “He didn’t want me to reveal anything,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “I met someone recently, a relative you’ve never seen…but forget him. Whatever my source, your girlfriend has a skeleton in her closet. She’s an exile.”

  “You mean, like a prisoner?” The term struck a chord. Rebecca had implied as much when she read the poem about dream-world exiles the night she hanged herself on stage.

  For a long moment, his mom stared out the window into a fog of newly falling snow. When she turned to him, her eyes had gone dreamy enough for him to wonder whether she’d had one too many glasses of the spiked eggnog. “In another dimension.”

  “Let’s get real, Mom.”

  “The line between reality and fantasy is blurry at best. Surely you’ve learned that by now, haven’t you?”

  She had him there. He was the guy who carried a coin in his pocket so he could distinguish one realm from the next. Still, “If Rebecca was exiled to some fantasyland, she wouldn’t be able to visit me.”

  “Does she stay long?”

  “Define long.”

  His mom flashed her trademark knowing smile. “In other words, she doesn’t.”

  Why not hit him over the head with it?

  “You look thinner, Brian. If she’s been conjuring food for you, keep in mind it has no substance.”

  “No way.”

  Mom returned her attention to the book. She turned to a page with drawings of a castle on one side and a jumble of Ogham lettering on the other, some scribbled upside down. “Did Rebecca say why she wanted me to see this?”

  “No.”

  “She has issues with a sorcerer, you know. They’re like male witches, only twenty times stronger. Think she might be in a bit of trouble?”

  The news got better and better. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  She sighed.

  Nope. Definitely not kidding. She’d never been known as a prankster.

  Brian clenched his fists. If Rebecca was in trouble, he’d find a way to get her out of it.

  “Look at you! I love your chivalry.” Mom flipped deeper into the book, pausing at a drawing Dante might have enjoyed, a battle among horned creatures in a flaming netherland. “The world hides more than mere witches in its shadows—angels, demons, sorcerers, not to mention monsters and dragons.”

  Great. But the thought anyone or anything might have it in for Rebecca started his heart pounding. He’d never let somebody mess with her.

  His mom leaned closer and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial tone. “You can peg sorcerers at night by their luminescent eyes.” Then she turned another page and mumbled something about fallen angels.

  He lagged a step behind, stuck on his old recurring dream about Rebecca on a rock and the guy with glowing eyes pointing at her. “Wait. Are sorcerers the bad guys?”

  “I wouldn’t paint them all with that brush, but as a lot, they do tend to be shifty.”

  “Can they visit dreams?”

  “With ease.”

  He slapped his hands on the table hard enough to sting his palms. His dreams hadn’t been nightmares or precognitive, they were visits by some sorcerer. But why?

  Mom got up and went to the window. She peered into the snowfall.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ve told you more than I should. You’re supposed to figure things out on your own.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  She came back to the table, settled into her chair. “Rebecca needs your help, Brian. I’ll tell you that much.”

  “You’ve hardly told me anything!” His knee was getting twitchy again. “Can you translate more of her book?”

  “Don’t you think the code might frown on a witch’s boyfriend asking his mother for help? Not that our ancestors imagined anything that ridiculous could ever happen. Honestly, Brian.”

  “Please.” He stared at her, look
ed down at the book, glanced up again, caught her gaze, and held on for dear life.

  She sighed. And she rolled her eyes. Favorable signs? Silence hung in the air as he debated whether hard-core pleading would help his cause. The best course might have been to hold his tongue and not even breathe. When it came to decisions by parents, the slightest shift of wind could blow the scales of justice the wrong way.

  “One poem,” she said.

  Even then, he didn’t risk a smile. But in some duplicate world, if not where Rebecca had supposedly been banished, then in a secret corner of his mind that didn’t show in his face, he jumped for joy.

  His mom riffled through the book and settled on the sketch of a mirror. “Looking glasses are full of magic, and they love conjuring the truth right in front of our eyes. I’ll read this one.”

  A mirror. He’d dreamed something about one recently. He took a slow intake of breath and listened for all he was worth.

  “Lo the maiden fair, the man on bended knee,

  the ring,

  and promised wedded bliss.

  She forsakes his plea and chooses prophecy.

  then runs

  and hides within the mist.

  “‘Turn my offer down? Your heart is cold, my dear.’

  Such scorn

  and loathing in his look.

  ‘Cloister you I will within a magic mirror,

  your life

  imprisoned in a nook.’

  “With the scorned groom’s words a pane of glass is formed

  to block

  her world from that outside.

  As a prison wall the looking glass is born,

  a mirror

  as tall as it is wide.”

  Mom looked up from the book. “Go ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Touch the ribbon.”

  “Oh.” He closed his fist around it, and a flood of ideas raced through his mind. They almost flitted away, but he managed to grab hold of a single fragment. A small one, but oh so important, and obvious. “Rebecca has a big mirror in her cabin. I bet it’s a portal into dreams.”

  “You think?”

  “Read another!”

  “Whatever for?”

  She was right. He’d heard plenty. He pushed out of his chair and stood.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “If I tell you, you’ll say I’m sixteen.” She’d hardly spoken to him for days after his unapproved road trip back in August.

  “Sixteen is nothing more than a number. Maybe I’ll give you a hall pass this time.”

  “What?” This suggestion was almost as earth-shaking as her witch revelation. He grabbed the back of a chair to keep his balance. “You’ll let me drive alone to—”

  “Nebraska. That’s where her cabin is, isn’t it?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do, and I have a magical device to keep us in close contact all the way.” She reached into a pocket of her dress.

  More fantastic than an enlightening rod? He gripped the chair tighter.

  She pulled something out and opened her hand to show it, a shiny silver miracle worker also known as a smartphone.

  “Very funny.”

  “This is no joke. If you don’t pull over and check in with me at every single rest area from here to Sidney, we’ll be trading that Kia of yours for a bicycle when you get back.”

  “Got it.” And what a rush! When he unlatched the door and cracked it open, his hand was shaking. But the everyday world lurked on the other side. The voices and laughter of Kara, Brad, and his dad wafted in from a distance. Maybe they were in the basement working on the Taj Mahal. Or they might have been in the living room watching movies. Kara had been talking up a Harry Potter marathon for the weekend.

  All of a sudden, the mission to rescue Rebecca from a supposed exile fell into a little gift box on the floor, wrapped with the promise of certain homesickness. End of rush. “Look, Mom, obviously you know more than you’re letting on. Why not just tell me everything? Even if Rebecca’s following some code, you aren’t bound by it.”

  She got up. Went to the window again. Didn’t answer.

  “What’s out there?”

  “Nothing.” She brushed past him and stalked out of the room.

  “Wait a second. I’m just—” His voice echoed back as if from a cavern. He hurried after her into an empty hallway.

  “Find her, Brian.” Her voice came from all around but left nothing in its wake. No Mom. No Dad. No Kara. No Brad. He rushed to the basement stairway. The lights were off down there.

  The living room was just as empty. Silence pressed down on him. The air had gone stale.

  The TV flicked on to a screen full of static. The walls wobbled in Jell-O-like ripples. The furniture glowed.

  Chapter 22

  Brian closed his eyes. Reopened them. Same weird scene. Rippling walls. Glowing furniture.

  He backed to the couch and came down on it, but the cushions didn’t have the right amount of give. He glanced down…and found himself on an old, threadbare couch.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him. He shut his eyes again. Opened them. “No way.” Either he’d crazily transported into Rebecca’s cabin or hallucinated the overstuffed chair over there and the collection of romance novels tumbling across the top row of her bookshelf. After only one stolen sip of the spiked eggnog?

  “Brian.” Her voice rang like church bells.

  “Rebecca!” He turned to the antique mirror. There she was, in reflection.

  A flash of light blinded him.

  He refocused.

  Shouldn’t have.

  End of fantasy. His parents’ living room returned to its normal, stale, totally uninteresting state.

  “Follow your destiny, boy!”

  Brian jumped at the man’s voice, shot a glance around the room, but didn’t see a soul.

  He collapsed onto the couch and tried to catch his breath.

  Follow his destiny. Yeah. Those jukebox coins of Rebecca’s were limited. She’d told him so. She couldn’t keep coming after him. He needed to drive to Nebraska pronto and track her down. If the car failed him again, he’d hitch.

  He’d make things happen and find her. Otherwise, suppose she ran out of chances to visit him and fell out of his life? He’d just become a regular guy then. Maybe he’d find an ordinary girlfriend, finish school, and eventually pursue a boring career. What a thrill.

  Ordinary couldn’t be the right destiny for the descendant of a long line of witches.

  Ordinary didn’t play well for someone attracting the interest of a glowing-eyed sorcerer.

  What a ridiculously bad choice ordinary would be for someone who had a shot at Rebecca!

  But he was thinking in selfish terms. This wasn’t about him. This was about rescuing Rebecca from whatever. From Abigail? Could be. So he’d need to track down Little Miss Scraggily Hair, too, and find out what was going on between them.

  Brian hurried to his room, stuffed his scattered things into his bag, came back down, grabbed the book from the den, and headed out of the house.

  He bent against the fury of a snow squall and hurried into his car. Started it up. The wipers created two half-moons of visibility. Melting snow dripped down his forehead and into his eyes. He dried them with his jacket sleeve and started down the driveway.

  Halfway to the street, the lamps and porch lights up and down the block blinked off. Even his headlights went out. He hit the brakes and groped for the light switch in pitch-blackness.

  The brights kicked on before he got his hand on the switch, highlighting a hooded man and a dog in their glare. The guy’s black coat and thick, dark head of hair steamed as if the driving snow thawed against him on impact. The Great Dane beside him glared through the windshield with reddish eyes, drops of melting snow oozing down its lean, muscular body.

  The man hurried around and tapped on the glass of the driver’s window.

  Every horror movie Brian had ever seen sc
reamed for him to drive away.

  “Please,” the man mouthed. The grooves in his forehead, tiny wrinkles by his eyes, and encouraging smile painted him as somebody’s dad. Not a serial killer.

  Brian cracked the window just enough to hear what the stranger wanted.

  “I’m looking for someone. Perhaps you can provide directions.”

  The man’s eyes started glowing.

  Brian pushed the button to run the window back up.

  It didn’t budge.

  The man leaned forward. “Solve this, wandering man, my riddle if you can. Tell me when a cat becomes just like a man.”

  “Wh— What?”

  A gust of wind swirled the snow into a whiteout. Then the air cleared, revealing an empty driveway. No sign of man or dog.

  The window got unstuck and ran back up. The neighborhood lights blinked back on.

  Brian tried to remember how to breathe.

  Who was that guy? A male witch? Another imp?

  Nope. Glowing eyes equaled sorcerer. They do tend to be shifty, his mom had said. And they liked riddles, apparently.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his mom standing at the den window. She held something up for him to see. Her cell phone. Ha ha. She waved and closed the blinds.

  Wandering man. Rebecca’s book resting on the seat was crammed with secrets disguised as fairy tales and written in a language supposedly only a witch could read. Yet that guy used a term from her poem about the vagrant. How could he know it?

  Brian looked down at the ribbon poking out of the book. An enlightening rod, huh? He touched it and tried to gather his thoughts.

  Brian had to be the vagrant in Rebecca’s original poem, the wandering man, a hero singled out to rescue her. From what, a curse? Some spell had exiled her into a shadowy world reachable only in dreams. Yet sometimes she came out and visited him. If she’d committed a crime, what kind of weird sentence was she serving? She couldn’t tell him other than through vague hints hidden in her verses. One of them implied a link to the Salem witch trials, and another suggested the importance of mirrors. Those clues, a vague prophecy, and this latest riddle were all he had to go on.